Ollie Chadwick opened the Protyre Motorsport Ginetta GT5 Challenge at Brands Hatch with a hard fought victory, perhaps harder fought than it needed to be.
Chadwick was first across the line at the end of the nine lap race. However, the drivers – George Gamble and Dennis Strandberg – immediately behind both carried ten second penalties following jump starts. The extra time dropped them to fourth and fifth in the results behind Gary Simms and Callum Pointon.
The penalised pair led the way on track for much of the race, though the battle for victory raged behind Chadwick, Pointon and Simms. However, as the latter two started to fall away Chadwick turned his attention to the ‘lead’ duo.
“I saw at the start they had jumped it and luckily the stewards spotted it and penalised them,” Chadwick told theCheckeredFlag.co.uk. “I was closing them quite quickly on track anyway and I didn’t really want to sit behind them and allow Gary [Simms] and Callum [Pointon] to close up and compromise things. I managed to find the best way I could to get past them and maintained the pace, the car was so fast around the back of the track, and it’s really good to get the win.”
Though the top three crossed the line almost nose to tail the official winning margin was just over four seconds.
The win helped Chadwick back towards the centre of the championship picture, now trailing Gamble by two points in third with Strandberg 40 points ahead with five races of season to go, each offering a maximum of 35 points for a win.
Rob Gaffney, Luca Hirst, Ben Constanduros, Nick Zapolski and Frederick Mortensen completed the top ten, the Dane recovering from a mid-race spin.
Stuart Pearson won the G20 class by a narrow margin, finishing 14th overall just half a second ahead of Brian Murphy. David Pattison completed the podium in the class for the older, open top machines.
